That Cat
Sid, Kate Walker's cat, seems to have snuck in here when I was gone last evening and taken over the blog.He has apparently annoyed Kate to the extent that she has posted an unbecoming picture on her blog which she insists is Sid and he insists is NOT. I am not getting involved in that fracas. It's entirely between them. However, if you want to have a look and then come back and tell me what you think, we could take a vote.
In the meantime, Gunnar and I have been out looking for Santa hats for him, but he hasn't found one that is becoming yet. And if he tries it on, Mitch grabs it and races around the yard with it because Mitch is THREE and that's the kind of dog he is. No decorum. No manners. Gunnar isn't best pleased.
Anyway, if we find a suitable hat, he will model it for you. If not, oh well. He has declined to wear reindeer ears like his friend Arrow the beagle. Arrow has no dignity, he says. Gunnar is all about dignity.
I was told today by the editorial boss of Harlequin Presents that I did dogs well in my books. I'm glad all this experience is good for something. I've also been told I can put a dog in Flynn's book. Hadn't considered it, but now I am. An Irish wolfhound, I think. Named O'Malley. Because we have friends who have an Irish wolfhound named -- imagine that -- O'Malley. And O'Malley is coming to visit at Christmas, I believe. So this will be a case of research coming to me. How fortuitous!
So, now we have a hero -- Flynn. A heroine -- Sara. A five year old son -- Liam. A castle -- in Ireland. A meddling mother -- also in Ireland. An illegitimate brother -- ditto. And a wolfhound. Works for me.
But I'm still in the pre-writing stage of this -- getting info, doing research, writing scenes that occur to me to get a feel for who the people are, finding castles, doing a little James Purefoy watching.
My friend Anne Gracie tells me I should be making a collage of James (I mean, Flynn) and Sara and the drafty castle and the Irish wolfhound and the 5 year old and anything else that occurs to me. She says it will inspire me. She did it with her book A Perfect Kiss -- and shows what she chose and why on her blog. You can see the end result here.
To me it seems like something that would take hours and hours -- ages and ages -- eons and eons. And I'm extraordinarily good at wasting time without anyone else giving me ideas of how to do it. So I don't know if I will or not. I know Jenny Crusie swears by it, too.
But if there's one thing I have learned about writing it's that what works for one writer doesn't necessarily work for another. But I am thinking about it. It will give me more opportunity to print pix of James P and look for suitable women to be Sara. She has short dark hair and a lot of energy and purpose, but I can't quite see her yet.
Got any ideas?
If you write, have you tried the collage thing? What'd you think? If you don't write, got any opinions? Or suggestions?
posted by Anne McAllister at 10:38 PM
5 Comments:
I don't do collages. They seem to be incredible waste of time...but I do know they work for some writers.
It all depends.
Chile and Joss say that Father christmas hats are fine, but only if they are followed by doggie treats. You haveto hold out for what is important.
I think you're where I am on the collage spectrum, Michelle. Maybe it's that I'm not particularly visual -- except, of course, in my appreciation of heroes like James P (as Anne Gracie pointed out to me). Maybe I should do a collage of James.
I'll pass the word on about the hat! Treats are, indeed, important.
Annie, I've decided -- at this point -- to simply gather some pix of people (James) and places I want in the book. And then I'm including Irish wolfhound pix as well. I'm not gluing them together. I know I couldn't bear to throw it out after -- and there's just too much stuff around here already.
No, wisest not to get into the Sid debate. That's a 'family matter.' And Gunnar thanks you for your opinion. We are indeed hat hunting!
Michelle, I can see your point -- I used to see collage as a great way to procrastinate. I always collected a few pics to help evoke a place or a scene, but I'd never done any collage. But my friend Barbara Hannay uses them, and so do some other writers whose work I know and respect, so I had all these pics and thought... why not give it a try?
Now I'm convinced. Something about the arrangment of the pics and the selection and odd litle bits and pieces really helps me play with possibilities. It doesn't actually take as much time as I thought, and for me, it's worth it.
I'm a fly-into-the-mist writer, and collage works well with that style, I think. A lot of the time I think I'm actually excavating a story from my mind, and collage makes this process easier, as my subconscious (which probably had a clearer idea of the story) helped with the choice and arrangement of pics.
Just one last thing -- my hero and heroine's pics are not chosen for actual physical resemblance, but for the mood evoked by that particular pic. Clive Owen has green eyes and brown hair, my hero has dark, almost black hair and golden eyes. But it was the expression in this pic that I wanted.
And now, simply looking at the collage plunges me into the world of my book.
Well, I'm convinced. I need plunging into the world of my book desperately, so I'm going to go for it. How big was yours, Anne? I mean, poster size? Or what? I'll see what I can do.
Fingers crossed. We'll see just how visual I am. I think you're right about the pix not being of the people per se, but of the expression or the body language or something that says "Flynn" or "Sara" or . . .
Thanks, Anne!
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